Saturday, October 26, 2013

We're winding up the month of October with a fresh serving of Breakfast Links - our fav links of the week to other blogs, web sites, articles, and images, all gathered for you from around the Twitterverse.
• Traditional Irish Halloween game of snap-apple: trying to bite into a revolving apple on a string - with lit candles.
• Search twenty-seven years of Eleanor Roosevelt's newspaper columns, available in full text on-line.
• A medieval iPad that's also a thousand-year-old time capsule.
• For a fuller bosom, try...butter? Chocolate? Ice-baths? These and other 19th c. bust-increasing solutions.
• See the sites or wander down Pudding Lane in this virtual version of 17th c. London before the Great Fire.
• And if you love the virtual Pudding Lane, then check out virtual St. Paul's, complete with John Donne sermon & audio.
• Alfonso the Slobberer and Ivar the Boneless: worst nicknames for medieval rulers.
• "Red Dress Manor", an eerie abandoned 1725 house that's frozen in time.
• A closer look at a gentleman's 18th c. suit.
• A brief history of that ever-popular word "dude."
• Just in time to inspire: brilliant Halloween costumes inspired by famous paintings.
• The Students' Guide Through Lincoln's Inn, 1805.
• Can you say puffy sleeves? An 1890s cotton dress with plenty of details.
• The lost Billings Mansion, Washington Heights, NYC; Cornelius Billings threw a banquet for millionaires in 1903 at the exclusive Sherry's - with guests on horseback.
• How to achieve the perfect Poe parlor.
• The influence of the Great War on early 20th c. fashion.
• "A pleasant time and a pleasant tomorrow" promises Quaff-Aid, a 1950s hangover remedy.
• The brutal world of the Nelson-era Navy.
• Never too many cooks in the kitchen! What an 18th c. recipe book can tell us about female alliances.
• A map from 1812: back when America was small, Australia was "New Holland", and big chunks of the world seemingly didn't exist.
• Even in 1775, there were armchair generals attempting to call the shots from afar.
• Costumes v. wardrobe: there IS a difference.
• A hedgehog's bladder and hot chocolate - 17th c. cures for children's bed-wetting.
• Delightful site featuring Victorian and Edwardian postcard fantasies of the year 2000.
• In 18th c. London, "mollies" - wearing clothes like these - gathered in inns and public houses to socialize and cross-dress.
• A new naval story for Trafalgar Day and Nelson is only briefly mentioned: Admiral Peter Rainier, defender of British India.
• The perfect Georgian dish (albeit a bit gruesome): "Sheeps head soop."Hungry for more? Follow us on Twitter @2nerdyhistgirls for fresh updates daily.

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A Polite Explanation

There’s a big difference in how we use history. But we’re equally nuts about it. To us, the everyday details of life in the past are things to talk about, ponder, make fun of -- much in the way normal people talk about their favorite reality show.

We talk about who’s wearing what and who’s sleeping with whom. We try to sort out rumor or myth from fact. We thought there must be at least three other people out there who think history’s fascinating and fun, too. This blog is for them.